


I'm in the Details with the Devil

by anthologia



Series: Kitten AU [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Coma, Explosions, F/M, Fire, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 00:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5562475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthologia/pseuds/anthologia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You have an actual family of terrifying crimefighters that can back you up, not to mention a girlfriend who isn’t exactly helpless in a fight. All you have to do is let us help.”</p><p>“Tim…” Dick tugs his hand out of her grasp and starts pulling on his gloves. “Whoever’s doing this is attacking me. I don’t need anyone else putting themselves in the line of fire.”</p><p>Tim huffs out a breath, because. He can be so stupid sometimes. “We’re already in the line of fire. I think yesterday kind of proved that.” </p><p>(Kitten AU based on events in Nightwing #88-9.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A couple short scenes written for my h/c bingo card and also to answer the question "hey, I wonder how that Blockbuster arc in Nightwing would've gone down with Kitten instead of Babs?" Specifically references events that took place in Nightwing #88-9, specifically the attack on Haly's Circus and Dick's apartment building.
> 
> Title from Fall Out Boy's "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark".

“Call someone.”

“I can handle this myself.”

Tim grabs Dick’s wrist to get him to stop suiting up and stay the fuck _still_ for two seconds. “You don’t _have_ to. You have an actual family of terrifying crimefighters that can back you up, not to mention a girlfriend who isn’t exactly helpless in a fight. All you have to do is let us help.”

“Tim…” Dick tugs his hand out of her grasp and starts pulling on his gloves. “Whoever’s doing this is attacking _me_. I don’t need anyone else putting themselves in the line of fire.”

Tim huffs out a breath, because. He can be so _stupid_ sometimes. “We’re already _in_ the line of fire. I think yesterday kind of proved that.”

He flinches, and she feels awful for saying anything, but at the same time, she can’t handle a repeat of last night. The sheer helplessness of not being able to do anything other than hold him while he cried himself out after the Haly’s fire is not something she intends to go through again. “ _Fuck_ , I didn’t mean – just – why hold back on anything you can hit this asshole with?”

He kisses her cheek, but he’s already pulling away from her. “We’ll talk about this later. I have some things I need to look into.”

“Dick…”

“ _Later_.”

He exits via the window, and for a moment, Tim considers diving out after him before discarding it as a monumentally stupid idea. No. She’ll go back to her place, change into the Kitten suit, _then_ go find him. Maybe he’ll have come to his senses by then. (Probably not, but she can hope.)

“Ryeka’s pretty girl!”

She barely makes it out the door before Yoska, one of Dick’s neighbors, stops her. Tim has to paste on a smile before turning to deal with him, because although she actually really does like the man, this _really_ isn’t the time. “If you were looking for Dick, I’m afraid you just missed him.”

Yoska waves a hand airily. “Is no problem. I can give this to you instead.” He hands her a bottle entwined with a necklace of gold coins. “Tell him, is almost time for spring fire.” A wink. “Good time for, how said… popping the question!”

Oh _god._ If this is what it’s like to have nosy older relatives, then she’s incredibly grateful neither of her parents have siblings. Tim coughs and hopes desperately that she isn’t blushing as obviously as she feels. “We’re not – I mean, we’ve barely been…” No. No time to explain this right now. She sighs. “…I’ll tell him, thank you.”

He lets her go with a cheerful goodbye and another exaggerated wink, and Tim books it out of the building as fast as she can to avoid getting caught by anyone else. Maybe she should call Selina for advice. After all, she has _experience_ with stubborn Bats –

The building explodes behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a weight at his back, arms going around him in a loose hug. Dick doesn’t bother to look. He doesn’t have to. “Hey, Steph.”

The current Robin only lets go of him long enough to drag a chair next to his. “How is she?”

“Burns. Broken bones. Hand’s cut up – she was holding something glass when it blew.” His attention finally flicks over to Steph for a moment. “She won’t wake up.”

“She’ll wake up,” Steph says, but he knows the confidence in her voice is backed up by absolutely nothing. He’s spent the last couple days trying to think of something, _anything_ he could do that would be better than sitting around and waiting. Going out and _destroying_ every piece of Blockbuster’s enterprises that he can find is definitely appealing, but that would mean leaving Tim. And he’s terrified by the thought that, if he leaves her unprotected for even a second, Blockbuster is going to find a way to finish killing her.

After a minute, Steph says, “Alfred’s here. He brought you some stuff to eat. He said he’ll be up soon, but he got stuck talking to Mr. and Mrs. Drake.”

Some ghost of feeling briefly stirs. “They’re here?”

“No. Mr. Drake’s on his way, but Mrs. Drake wanted more information.”

“Good.” He can’t spare the energy to feel bad about that. He _should_ want Tim to have everyone here for her, but he has no idea what he’d do if he saw her parents right now. Something not pleasant.

Steph leans against his arm and lets the silence settle over them again. No. Silence is the wrong word. This is a hospital. Outside of Tim’s room, life hurries by in all its noisy glory. Inside, the only sounds that matter are the noises the medical equipment makes, reassuring him that she’s still breathing. That there’s still hope.

“So do you have a plan yet?” Steph asks, quiet. “For dealing with Blockbuster. Cause I’m in.”

“I have a plan.” It would mean leaving Tim’s side, but Alfred’s here now, and the last time he spoke to Selina, she said she was about two hours out from the hospital. Dick can trust them to keep Tim safe for a little while. “You’re not going to like it.”

Steph snorts a little – not quite a laugh, but close. “I’m still in.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things that have taken me way too long to finish: this follow-up.

“Tim?”

She’s vaguely aware of someone calling her name, but it’s faint. She’s drifting on a motionless sea, somewhere miles away from the person trying to call her from land. There’s feeling, but it’s too far away to comprehend. It’d be easier to just go back to sleep and let herself wash up on shore later, but the person’s still saying her name insistently. If he could just calm down – she struggles to find the right commands to get her eyes open just so she can tell him that.

It’s Dick. The person talking to her is Dick, and he’s… _crying_. She stares at him for a few moments, uncomprehending. It’s difficult to imagine what would be upsetting him. When was the last time she saw him? At his apartment, maybe. He was… he was upset then, too. About something. He’d gone to Haly’s Circus, and it – oh god. It _burned_.

She tries to reach out for him, but her arm’s not cooperating. And there’s things attached to it, an IV and sensors and crap. She tries to yank at it to get rid of them, but Dick moves faster, holding her still.

“No, Tim – it’s okay, sweetheart. You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re just in a hospital. Just lie still for now. Okay?”

He’s already upset enough and struggling against him is e _xhausting_ , so she stops. He gives her a smile that’s shaky and weak, like making the physical motions with his face is difficult. (She can relate.)

She _wants_ to talk to him, ask him why they’re in a hospital, but before she can gather the energy to make the attempt, there’s a nurse pushing him out of Tim’s immediate line of sight. The nurse asks questions of his own, like _do you know where you are_ and _do you know what happened to you_ , but she has no idea. She wants to stay awake long enough to talk to Dick (or at least _try_ to talk to him), but it’s a struggle to keep her eyes open after only a few minutes.

After that first period of consciousness, she just… drifts. It’s hard to keep track of anything, like she keeps half-watching and then skipping scenes in a movie. One moment, she’s with Stephanie, who’s chattering cheerfully about whatever the Teen Titans have been up to recently and knitting her way through a purple scarf; then Selina, who’s holding her hand and telling her about an art exhibition that’s going to be in Gotham soon; then it’s Dick again, slumped over in a chair nearby and snoring slightly. He’s going to hurt his neck lying like that.

“Dick?” When he doesn’t answer, she lets out a breath, frustrated. This would be so much easier if she could just sit up and shake his shoulder or something. “ _Dick_.”

He jerks awake, unfocused for a moment until he looks at her. “Tim? God, how’re you – how do you feel?”

Weird. Like her entire body is a bruise but her brain’s been wrapped in a layer of wool so thick she can barely feel it. She glances down at herself, like visual confirmation is going to answer that question, and… wow. She looks terrible. Both her legs and one of her arms are in casts, there’s white gauze all over, and what little skin she _can_ see is discolored and bruised. “What… _happened_?”

“There was… ” Dick looks kind of terrible, too, now that she comes to think of it. Bruised and tired. “There was an explosion at the apartment building.”

“What?” She _thinks_ she heard him correctly, but it’s like there’s a loose connection somewhere in her head, making the words refuse to get into an order that makes sense.

“The building,” he repeats. She kind of wonders if anyone would object if he crawled into the bed with her. There isn’t _much_ room, but maybe she could move over a little. If she can move at all. Then maybe he could stop looking so haggard. “It was blown up.”

_That can’t be true_ , she wants to say, but. There’s something tugging at the edges of her memory _._ Pain, heat. Mostly pain. “Who else? Got hurt?”

“ _Everyone_.” He drops his head into his hands. “Tim, everyone was – everyone but you and Aaron. They’re all…”

“All what?” He’s not going to say what she thinks he’s going to say. _No._ She tries to sit up, struggling when she finds she can only sort of put weight on one elbow.

“Dead,” he says dully. “They’re all dead.”

She stares at him for a few heartbeats before she starts struggling upright again with a half-formed idea that she could – go see. Check. Because they can’t – they can’t all be dead. It doesn’t make _sense_. Her stupid arm still doesn’t want to cooperate, screaming at her with every tiny bit of weight she puts on it, but it’s not in charge here, and she has to – has to _something_.

“Tim, no. You’re not – you’re going to hurt yourself.” Dick’s right next to her now, slides a hand behind her back to support her while he moves her arm back to her side and lowers her down onto the mattress again. “You can’t – not yet, okay?”

“I don’t understand,” she whispers.

He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s too soon. I should have… “ He stares at her helplessly. “Just focus on getting better. Okay?”

Her eyes are wet. There were so many people. Yoska was – god, _Yoska._ She feels – she doesn’t know how she feels. “Who?”

“Just go back to sleep for now, Tim. Please?” He brushes a hand over her forehead, warm and comforting, but she can’t just let this go. 

“Who was it?”

“Tim…”

“I need to _know_.” She wants to scream and throw things and tell Dick not to patronize her, but the little bit of struggling she already did took most of her energy reserves. “I was just _there_. I was – I need to know.”

She thinks, at first, that he’s just going to tell her to rest again, but then he sighs. “Desmond. Haly’s, the apartment – it was all him. It’s been taken care of.”

“Why are you – ” She makes another abortive attempt to sit up because it’s _hard_ to have a conversation like this lying down, but Dick doesn’t even need to stop her this time because she can’t seem to raise her head more than a couple inches. “Why aren’t you doing something? You should be – ”

“A certain vigilante tricked him into confessing to his involvement and turned a recording of it in to the police. They’ve arrested him and the criminals he hired to carry it out.” The smile he gives her is – not right. Grim, mostly. “It’s done.” 

Oh. She feels abruptly deflated and weirdly hollow. “That’s good. That’s… That was… fast?”

“It wasn’t exactly… “ Dick shakes his head and shifts so that he’s kneeling next to the bed, more level with her. “It’s been a little while since the explosion, Tim.”

It’s hard to make sense of her memories, but it can’t have been more than a few days. Being heavily medicated doesn’t do much for her ability to retain memory, but if it was much longer, she thinks she would have _some_ impression of it. "How long?"

“A few weeks.”

“No.” That doesn’t make sense, but Dick doesn’t – there’s no concession in the way he looks at her. It’s not a really horrible joke. “That can’t be right.”

“You’ve been… you woke up a couple days ago. You were in a coma for a while. It was – “ He reaches for one of her hands like he’s going to hold it, but stops. It’s still bandaged. “You’re going to be okay now.”

She was in a coma? She was in a coma. The words don’t make much more sense than _there was an explosion_ and _they’re all dead_. They’re too big, too much to think about at once.

“Just – “ Dick presses a kiss to her forehead. “Just go back to sleep now, okay? We can talk more if you want when you’re feeling better.”

“Dick…”

“Please? For me?”

“I… “ She _wants_ to stay awake, to say no, but the thing is, it’s really, really hard to deny Dick when he looks as exhausted and beaten-down as he does right now. Plus, she is kind of having trouble keeping her eyes open. It probably wouldn't hurt to rest them for a few minutes. “…Okay.” The last thing she sees before her eyes slide shut is the smile he gives her, comfortingly real and Dick and _okay_.

**Author's Note:**

> If you are interested in my fics and want more, I have an account at syntactition.tumblr.com where I have bits of stories that are currently in the works and other ficlets and stories that haven't made their way to AO3.


End file.
